What You Need to Know to Keep Sensitive Data Safe

Data security is more important in this technologically advanced world. Cybersecurity guidelines are also changing due to the high risk of data loss. If we lose some of the important data, then we may not recover it, and another person can misuse that data.

To protect you and your website from such a loss, we will discuss some critical security methods. So, without delay, let’s start with what sensitive data is.

Sensitive Data: What is it?

Important and private data called “sensitive data” needs a higher level of data security to keep hackers and bugs from getting to it without permission. Data that is considered private should usually be kept safe from outsiders and shouldn’t be able to be accessed without permission. Regulatory bodies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU, and Australia’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) set cybersecurity and data protection standards for big businesses today. These standards are meant to make information security stronger.

Take a look at the following instances of private data:

Personal information that can be used to identify a person (also known as PII)
Information about money, banks, or credit cards
Details about the law
The confidentiality of health information that must be maintained
Data on biometrics
Customer and worker information
Record of websites you’ve visited
Secrets of trade or knowledge that is considered confidential
Data on business operations
Secret information from the government

Techniques for the protection of sensitive information

We can implement different methods to keep our data safe. Within this section, we will talk about some of the more common security procedures.

1. Your personal computer should be used to save information.

The first step in protecting your data is to figure out what information you have and who can see it. To find security holes, you need to know how personal information comes into, goes through, and leaves your business, as well as who has access to or could have access to it. Once you know how the information moves, you can figure out the best ways to keep it safe.

Take a look at all of your company’s computers, laptops, flash drives, disks, home computers, and other gear to see where private data is kept. Please make a list of the information you have by type and where it is located. While your file boxes and computers are good places to start, keep in mind that your company gets personal information from many places, such as websites, contractors, call centers, and more.

What about data kept on laptops, flash drives, cell phones, and workers’ home computers? You can’t call an inventory complete until you look at all the places where private information could be kept.

Talk to your sales team, IT staff, HR office, accounting staff, and outside service providers to keep track of personal information as it moves through your business.

There are different risks for each type of knowledge. Pay close attention to how you store private data like Social Security numbers, credit card or financial information, and other information that can be used to find out who someone is. That’s what thieves use most of the time to steal money or identities.

2. Delete unnecessary files.

Personal information that could be used to find out who someone is shouldn’t be kept unless you have a good business reason to do so. Indeed, don’t even gather it. Once you have a good business reason to keep the information, could you not keep it for too long?

Only use Social Security numbers for legal and needed things, like filing employee taxes. Do not use Social Security numbers for things that are not necessary, like an employee or customer ID number, or just because you’ve always done it.

If you don’t need to, don’t keep credit card information from customers. One example is that you shouldn’t keep the account number and end date unless you have to for business reasons. If you own this information for too long or for longer than you need to, it could be used to commit fraud or identity theft.

Check the settings that come with the software that reads credit card numbers and handles transactions. It’s sometimes set to keep information forever. You should change the usual setting to make sure you don’t keep the information you don’t need.

If you have to keep information for legal or business reasons, write down a strategy that says what information you need to keep, how to keep it safe, how long you need to keep it, and how to get rid of it when you’re done safely

3. Turn on encryption for data

Encrypting data so that only allowed users can see it is something that any organization that deals with highly sensitive data should think about. To prevent data theft or unauthorized access, cryptographers use intricate techniques and ciphers. Without a decryption key, it would be tough to get the data back, even if it were stolen or captured. Data encryption keeps the message secret while it’s being sent and lets authentication processes work.

For a long time, the military and government have used data encryption to send and receive secret messages. Encryption helps keep private data safe whenever it’s sent online, like payment information or social security numbers (SSNs). But it’s important to remember that encryption has its limits because of things like cryptographic threats and the use of cloud storage. Even though encryption is functional, it shouldn’t be the only way that data is kept safe.

4. Do assessments of the effects on data protection (DPIAs).

Whenever data storage or processing is involved, it’s essential to look at and name all possible risks before they happen. Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) are real-time tools that help businesses protect their data if they pose a big risk of personal information getting out. As of 2018, any company that handles personal data must have a DPIA in order to follow the rules set by the GDPR.

Groups must do the following as part of a DPIA:

Describe the type of data processing, its scale, its setting, and its goal.
Check to see what risks each person or group faces.
Figure out what safety steps are needed and how much they should cost.
Make sure that security procedures follow the rules.
A DPIA isn’t just a way to figure out how risky it is to process data; companies can also use it to set roles for processing data within the company, how data moves between systems and people, and what the security strategy is in case of a cyberattack.

5. Use data masking or data hiding

The main difference between data masking and data encryption is that data masking replaces the original data with fake data to keep it safe. When you look at protected data, you will always need the encryption key to see the original data set. But when you look at masked data, the actual data is gone forever.

Most of the time, companies use data masking methods internally to keep developers, testers, and researchers from getting sensitive data. They can also try different security protocols, fix bugs in systems, and add new features without using actual user data when they mask data. When you hide data, you add an extra layer of security to keep outsiders and employees from seeing your information.

6. Establish at least two different methods of authentication.

Authentication and password protection are two of the most accessible types of data security to set up. The login information of many big companies is leaked in significant data breaches, and this information is easy to find on the dark web. Two-factor authentication (2FA) or multi-factor authentication (MFA) can help users protect private data, though.

The extra factors needed for authentication make security better and make it harder for threat players to get access to data. A Microsoft report showed that only 11% of business accounts had MFA, and 99.9% of accounts that were hacked did not use it.

A lot of hackers use brute-force cracking to try to guess popular passwords and usernames and get into accounts. Also, a lot of people use the same usernames and passwords for multiple accounts, which makes them less secure. Authentication methods make it quick and easy for users to protect themselves against most hacking attempts.

7. Make copies of your data

All security systems are built around managing and backing up data. Anyone or any business can quickly restore a backup in case malware or ransomware infects a hard drive or network. As a result, the damage will be reduced. Data should be saved every day, if not at least once a week, to keep hackers from getting to it.

The 3-2-1 rule is an excellent way to back up your data: keep three copies of your most important files on two different types of storage (physical and cloud), and keep one copy offline or away from your main computer in case of an emergency or disaster.

8. Make your network security stronger

Network security is a broad term for using a lot of different security measures to keep your private information from being stolen or hacked. It helps keep users’ IT (information technology) environments safe by stopping people who aren’t supposed to be there from getting in. To make your information safer, here are some tools you can use:

Antivirus and malware protection
Stopping data loss (DLP)
IDSs and IPSs are both types of intrusion-detecting systems.
Front lines
Use VPNs, which stand for virtual private networks.
Response and discovery at the endpoint
Partitioning the network
Safe tools for removing data

Conclusion

Everyone needs data security. It is not difficult to safeguard sensitive data. We only need to implement a few simple but effective security measures. We can employ simple approaches such as making several copies of data, encrypting data, using multiple verification methods, and so on. Our digital security is in our hands. The more you wait to accept it, the more you will lose.